the girl who lost the sun
by vis-et-decus
Summary: Azula and Ty Lee. when your dreams have ended, time can be transcended -- remember me.


**Fire Triangle:** Instructional aid in which the sides of a triangle are used to represent the three factors (oxygen, heat, fuel) necessary for combustion and flame production; removal of any of the three factors causes flame production to cease.

Glossary of Wildland Fire Terminology. National Wildfire Coordinating Group. November 2008.

* * *

Her body doesn't remember how to behave.

Wait. That's not entirely fair. It does remember how to do certain things. She can still blink and eat and sleep. She isn't paralyzed; she can sit up and stretch and walk and run and do all the things a basic, normal human being should be able to do.

But that's just it. She _isn't_ a basic, normal human being. And her body doesn't remember that.

* * *

She doesn't remember how to walk.

Oh, sure, she can walk. But not _walk_. Not like the way she did before.

Before (_before what?_ she thinks bitterly. _before the institution, or before zuko _cheated_ his way to a victory, or before the start of the agni kai, or before the coronation, or before seeing mother again, or before_-) all of this, her body worked fine. She hauls up her memories of Ember Island and gazes down at her footprints in the sand: a shallow dip to mark her heel and her instep, but the pressure lies in the balls of her feet and the reach of her toes. Her stride is wide, proud; there is a marked, aggressive distance between each print. All the weight is at the forefront of her feet because she is going forward - always forward, ever-forward, stretching for the horizon.

Hard, cold stone leaves no footprints but austere walls cannot trap either her memory or her imagination; she travels to Ember Island once more and walks by the footprints she left there so long ago (_but was it really that long ago?_). Now her weight is concentrated back on her heels; the imprint is wider than it should be: she wobbles, uncertain. Each step is tentative - if there is one taken at all - and the marks are deep. They should be, for a person who stands in one place for so long a time that she starts sinking into the sand until it tickles at her ankles.

This isn't her fault. She wants to stride forward again, go forth with that swagger to spare - not that she ever _swaggered_, of course, that was something that juveniles and harlots did. But she used to carry the definition of a swagger in her walk without the actual walk: confidence. Arrogance. A defined assuredness that the world was hers, and everything in it. _Entitlement_ - that was the word.

She didn't walk. She _flew_.

It's difficult to fly in a cage.

* * *

She doesn't remember how to speak.

Yes, she can _talk_. Anyone could talk. But that was like saying one could buy class - no, one could buy _style_. Class was something you had or you didn't. And before (_before, damn that word, damn that brother, damn that-)_ all of this, she could _speak_. She spoke with an intelligence far beyond her teenaged years; people heard the voice of an adolescent but the ideas and orchestrations of an adult, and an adult possessed of a sharp cunning and sharper wit at that.

When she spoke crowds would stop to hear. When she spoke nations would crumble and empires would rise. She rather liked not having a deep base voice or looming presence; she knows that for all the hissing and performing larger serpents put on the ones you truly had to watch out for were the small ones that lay hidden in the grass, their fangs like death and their whispers twice as quiet. She does not need stature to intimidate: her eyes are glorygold and there is victory written in the smug set of her jaw. And her words… oh, her words. _Friends, citizens of the Fire Nation, countrymen-_

But she cannot speak now.

Not even when it matters most. Not even when Zuko and Mai come to see her and try to talk reason into her - or what they consider reason, anyway. What they see as a negotiation she sees as nothing less than absolute surrender, and she snarls and snaps and screams at them like any animal locked up in a cage is bound to do. The few, few material objects she has lying around are thrown at their faces; she claws at the door that separates them and rains down curses upon their heads that would make damned men ashamed.

And yet they keep returning, wearing the same pitying, infuriating looks on their faces and batter her psyche with their constant pleas and proposals. _We won't abandon you. We are here for you. We want to make sure you get better. We will keep returning._ And each time, she greets them with the same performance, even though it lacks - it lacks _something._ She knows that she has lost and that heavy fact is what weighs her tongue down, makes it lack the characteristic bite that defined her words for all these years. Gone is the limitless confidence of an assured victor. Gone is her glamour. She cannot speak.

She cannot speak, but she can shriek. During one of their countless visits, Mai turns to Zuko and off-handedly mentions that they will hardly need a child, as her tantrums are enough for ten children.

"You think this is amusing? Do you come here to gloat, to laugh at me?"

"No. We visit you because-"

"Do you think it's _funny_ that you _stole_ my _bending?_"

Zuko's eyes widen. If she were a weaker woman, she might think that it was genuine surprise written all over his face. "What are you talking about? No one-"

"You took it! You took it from me! Just like you stole dad's bending, you got your Avatar friend to steal it from me… I don't remember what it feels like, Zuko! I can't- I can't-"

"Azula, no one touched you! I never-"

"_You took away the only reason daddy ever loved me!"_

* * *

One thing she does remember how to do is see. And see she does, right through Zuko's little traps.

Neither he nor Mai had shown their faces after her admission - and it was a bitter one, an acknowledgement of weakness, one she would have rather killed herself over than given had Zuko's feigned innocence not incensed her past reason - and she was beginning to think that they were through and she would finally have peace (_what a disgusting word_). But she should have known that her brother had more tricks up his sleeve than Mai had knives up hers.

They come see her out of nowhere, they tell her they've brought along another visitor. It is a girl in green, with wide eyes and a vaguely familiar face.

They say it's Ty Lee, and then they leave.

But green isn't pink. The face is too pale to belong to Ty Lee, even when she rubs off all that ghastly makeup or whatever nonsense it is. Yes, her hair may be in the same braid and her voice might really, _really_ resemble Ty Lee's except for that light quiver but it's not Ty Lee. It's not. (_how low of them,_ she thinks acidly, _how cruel of them to taunt me with this, with __**this**__. it's exactly the sort of thing I would do.)_

She does not treat this pretender with the same fury that she welcomes Zuko and Mai with. She does not stomp and yell and swear. She sits and stares, those golden eyes of hers churning and sizzling like molten lava - it is the only fire she has left and she guards it jealously, not even allowing her brother a taste of it. But for them to invoke this girl's image, her memory - and all after she'd confessed she could not bend anymore; were they seeking to finish her off?

The tactician in her thought it a brilliant move. The Fire Lord in her knew she would not simply roll over and give them her throat.

This imposter tries speaking to her, tells her tales of their time as children. She's good, they've even gotten her up to speed on the past she'd shared with Ty Lee. Their time doing acrobatics, and the prank they pulled on Mai and Zuko and how flustered the two had been when they'd ended up in the fountain, a tangle of limbs and indignant looks. She talks about the time Azula had come to fetch her at the circus, about how nervous she'd been when the net beneath her had caught fire - but the ringmaster had told her later that the Princess had inquired about her talents and pressed forward only when assured that she would not fall.

"You had more faith in me than I had in myself!" the pretender giggles, and she wants to disembowel her for stealing Ty Lee's voice, Ty Lee's mannerisms. "But of course you did, you were always so-"

A string of compliments as Ty Lee had been accustomed to giving her; she sits and stares, imagining this liar silenced by a bolt of blue lightning. That's all she can do: imagine.

She can still see, and she watches wordlessly as the imposter finally gets up and takes her leave with a cheerful "I'll see you again tomorrow, 'Zula!" She does a cartwheel on her way out, exactly the way Ty Lee would have done.

She can still see, and she can see that this isn't Ty Lee.

* * *

She can't remember how to walk or speak or bend but she is cursed with seeing, and so she suffers this false Ty Lee every day for a month. She won't give in by ranting and raving; she knows that somehow, that would be a victory to this liar and the master manipulator behind it all, Zuko. She sits and stares and feels the rage boiling within her with each story this fraud speaks, tarnishing a memory that she and Ty Lee had shared. Each day grates on her patience, the tides of anger rising and pulling at the fragile sands of her mind - and the waters never recede back to their original level. It builds up inside of her, a pressure right underneath her sternum that she can never fully get rid of.

"Do you remember that time when we were both covered in sludge, and-"

_I remember. Mai refused to join; she said she didn't care how many bolts of lightning I threw at her. But you needed no request, no threat, you were right there by my side._

"Do you remember when we were in Ba Sing Se, and-"

_I remember. We won. We_ _won. What six hundred days and an entire army could not do, three girls did. Once you taste triumph, once you drink victory, it's the only thing you feel you can stand anymore._

"Do you remember that party at Ember Island, and-"

_I remember. Those boys, and I said I was jealous, but I never said-_

_Enough._

"What?" The imposter looks startled, and - a wild joy rose in her heart at this - a little nervous. She didn't realize she'd spoken aloud but she finds herself standing with her hands clenched into fists. And never in her life has she ever considered going back, so the only way to go is this: forward.

"You aren't Ty Lee."

A bemused expression crosses the liar's face. "What are you talking about 'Zula? Of course I'm me."

"_Ty Lee_," the name was dragged out between clenched teeth, "betrayed me at the Boiling Rock. _Ty Lee_ was left to rot in a dungeon where I could not see her._ Ty Lee_ joined those pathetic Kyoshi Warriors when I was put into this _cage_. When were you going to bring that up in all your ridiculous babbling?"

"I wasn't," came the soft reply.

Her anger is clouding her thoughts, making her head spin. She imagines this is what it's like to be caught in a fire with the smoke filling your eyes and nose and mouth and lungs; incredible heat nipping at your body before it roared up to its full potential and consumed you whole. She's never known the sensation but she imagines that someday, she might - how fitting, to die by fire…

... but not before this pretender goes first.

"Of course you weren't, because you're not the real Ty Lee. You're-"

"A circus freak, right?" The liar is trying to joke with her, make her smile - or smirk, rather, she doesn't really _smile_ - but there's a vulnerable tremble in her voice that she recognizes all too well. She might not be able to walk or speak or bend but she still has her fangs, and she latches onto that weakness with all the viciousness she'd displayed during the last Agni Kai.

"You're dressed in green rags and you tell me stories about how you've made new friends with the warriors that you once fought against. You tell me about how great the Avatar and his band of ragged peasants are, the very people that you supposedly helped me hunt. You're _pathetic_. You're not the girl who ruined my chances for victory, the one who didn't even have a weak excuse like the one Mai gave."

Though the imposter isn't meeting her eyes, her own hands are tightened into fists where they rest in her lap. "But I did."

The liar turns her head, and those large brown eyes are so similar to Ty Lee's that the fury builds up even higher, metallic liquid expanding forth from her chest and racing along her nerves with such speed and ferocity that it _hurts_. (_is this how ordinary people feel anger?_)

"My reason was the same as Mai's. I loved more than I feared. I loved _you_."

"Liar."

"I loved you-"

"_Liar._"

"-and I still do-"

The next noise that left her mouth was not an accusation or an explicative or even a word but more a combination of emotions: fury. Longing. Disbelief. Fury. Impatience. Grief. Fury.

Despair.

That same agonizing burning has built up to its highest point; she feels weak with it: it resembles a ravenous hunger, an ache that fills her up to her last pore and becomes the only thing she can concentrate on. The image before her wavers (_and now my sight has been stolen, I cannot even see_) and that sound rises up from the depths of her chest and leaves her lips once again. She steps forward as the world continues shivering, shimmering; she does not know why the pretender's mouth is agape but if it is the only victory she is awarded, she will take it. The world around her smells like decay and ash and she is sweating, her fingertips tingling - such is the power of the rage she feels toward this individual, this girl who (like her precious Ty Lee) has sought out and struck the weak places beneath the armor.

They can take her defeat and her walk and her words and her sight and even her bending, but they will not, will _not_ take the last thing that is good and pure, the last thing she can truly claim is hers and hers alone and mean it.

There is a faint snapping noise in her ears, one that almost resembles the popping of the fire Zuko had made that time on Ember Island where he fed it the tattered remnants of their past.

The room is uncomfortably warm.

The anger is rising, rising, falling- falling over the barriers of her will and pride; she said this liar would not have the satisfaction of getting to her but this is too much. She will never settle for being less than perfect, and her perfectionist side will not tolerate blasphemy to be spewed all over her memories: they are all she has in place of her freedom. The tension in her chest and at the base of her spine has uncoiled itself and her hands feel strangely heavy, her nerves singing out with the burning.

The fraud shimmers silver like a mirage and the air is thick, suffocating, and now the world is bathed in tints of blue-

Tints of-

"Azula!"

_fire_-

* * *

An ordinary person needs three things to create fire: air, heat, and fuel.

Azula needs only the power of her bloodline, knowledge of firebending techniques and a determination driven from the strength of her personality and shaped by the experiences of her life.

What Azula doesn't know is that she is just the same as a non-bender, one of those ordinary people that she so despises. Her determination is the fuel, the heat lies latent in her blood. Knowledge is something that isn't necessary: she can create a larger, a better fire, but it does not prevent her from creating one to begin with.

What Azula doesn't know is that Zuko is telling her the truth. Her body remembers perfectly well how to behave, even if she tried running through all her forms in secret and it felt like an awful caricature of the power she used to possess. She has the heat and the fuel.

All she needs is the air.

What Azula doesn't know is that though her body remembers it all (how to walk, how to speak, how to see, how to _bend_), it doesn't remember this:

Without Ty Lee, it doesn't remember how to _breathe_.


End file.
